The City of Paris helps citizens assess the cost of their PB ideas (Source: City of Paris)

Last fall, Parisian voters decided how to spend 20 million euros of their city budget, the city's first participatory budgeting (PB) experience. This year there is more than triple that at stake, and the process of crafting proposals for funding has been opened to the general public. As host to Europe's largest PB experiment, Paris is leading by example. Read More

The internal combustion of the New Organizing Institute; why sexist and homophobic tweets are still not a good idea; lessons from John Ellis (Jeb) Bush on how not to do transparency; and much, much more. Read More

The biggest challenges at the intersection of the Internet and philanthropy; why Facebook users in the developing world might not know they're using the Internet; takeaways from the Twitter transparency report; and much, much more. Read More

"You are here to make decisions with others." That is the raison d'être of DemocracyOS: to help groups of people come to a decision in a democratic fashion. The team behind the software began working on the code in April 2012, and it has been available on Github for almost as long, but users had to be relatively savvy. The open-source platform they are currently developing, with support from Y Combinator, will allow anyone to launch a “democracy” in minutes, just as someone without any knowledge of code can launch a blog on Wordpress. That platform will launch in March.

Civic hackers in Chicago spot powerful alderman getting special snow removal attention using open government data; how Twitter is teaching Washington's denizens to open up; debunking Uber's claim that it has reduced drunk-driving; and much, much more. Read More

Chicago's "black site"; The New York Times reports "little guys" like Tumblr and Reddit have won the fight for net neutrality but fails to mention Free Press or Demand Progress; Hillary Clinton fan products on Etsy to inspire campaign slogans?; and much, much more. GO